The Woodwind family gets its name from the instruments, at one point in time they were all made out of wood, from the tiny Piccolo to the oddly shaped Bassoon. But today they are mostly made out of metal, wood, plastic, or some other combination of material. The Woodwind family consists of different many types of instruments, but there are six main types of Woodwind instruments; flute, clarinet, saxophone, oboe, English horn, and bassoon. Almost all of them are played using a reed, and they are all played by blowing in one end and and the sound coming out the other end. Unlike the three or four buttons that brass instruments have, most woodwind instruments have more then four, many many more, the bassoon depending on the model has upwards of 23 buttons. Other woodwinds like the recorders only have eight holes instead of buttons.
Almost all woodwind instruments are played with a reed, but there are a few woodwind instruments that don't. The flute, piccolo, and recorder do not use wooden reeds, the flute and piccolo are played by blowing across a hole in the mouthpiece. The recorder is played by blowing on the end that looks like a whistle, and you can control the pitch of both of them by angling the air stream up or down. Other woodwind instruments like the clarinet and saxophone are played with reeds. Reeds are thin strips of wood that narrow down to a paper thin end, and they can also be made from plastic but the sound quality of the instrument will be affected. Woodwind instruments like the oboe and bassoon are played with whats called a double reed. Double reeds are two reeds that are tied together so that when blown on they vibrate against each other.
I personally played both the alto saxophone and bassoon and i found it more difficult to play the bassoon because it was a double reed instrument. It is more common for double reed instruments to be more difficult to play, because you have to be able to control the pressure on both your top and bottom lip while blowing through the reed.
(The You Tube video shows several different types of woodwinds.)
I recently went to the Midland Center for the Arts, and listened to the Midland Concert band play eight songs each one different from the other. The songs were; The Sinfonians by Clifton Williams, Sequoia by Homer C LaGassey, Variations on a Korean Folk Song by John B Chance, Andrea Chenir by Umberto Giordano, Trauersinfonie by Richard Wagner, Satiric Dances by Norman D Joio, The Seventies by Paul Jennings and Paul Lavender, and The Pathfinder of Panama by John Philip Sousa. My personal favorite was Variations on a Korean Folk Song, because when I was in high school I played that song and had trouble playing all the notes because the notes are moving so fast that I could hardly keep up.
But what surprised me the most about the concert was in the beginning before any of the planned songs were played, about twenty trumpet players walked out on to the stage and started to play. But these were not any ordinary trumpets, these had elongated bells. The bells stretched out so far that each trumpet had a banner hainging from it and each banner was about one foot wide and three feet long. But not only was the bell longer the trumpet was louder, they were so loud that it only took twenty of them to fill the auditorium with sound.
Almost every Brass instrument has a duplicate that's either different looking or different sounding. This gives a wider range of instruments to chose from, like the cornet,it is the same as the trumpet but it looks different and has more mellow sound, but if you were blindfolded while listening to them, you would not be able to tell the difference between the two.
(The YouTube Video shows many odd types of brass and most of them are trumpets.)
If you think the brass family got its name from being made of brass then your right. But they have not always been made just from brass, it has been known that they have been made from wood, horns, shells, animal hide, and with the rise in technology they have also been made from plastic, nickel, gold, and silver. But no matter what they are made of there still played the same.
Just like the woodwind family brass players use their breath to produce sound, but instead of blowing on a wooden read brass players buzz their own lip on a metal cup shaped mouthpiece of varying sizes. These sizes are determined by the instrument and the players preferences. The trumpets mouthpiece is about as big as a quarter, the trombones mouthpiece is about the width of a golf ball, and the tuba has the biggest mouthpiece of them all, its about 2 inches wide and it feels like its eating your face. The mouthpiece helps amplify the buzzing to create the varying sounds.
Most all brass instruments have valves that that are connected to the many feet of pipe. These valves control how much pipe is being used to play a note, if there are more valves being pressed there is more pipe that the sound has to go through, this will generally make a lower sound. The only brass instrument to not have valves is the trombone. The trombone, instead of having valves has a slide, it makes different sounds by extending or shorting its slide. this makes it the only instrument to play all the notes with a single action.
For my blog I picked the topic Musical Instruments. I choose this topic because I loved learning how to play trumpet and I have been playing it sense sixth grade. Then in ninth grade I thought myself how to play the saxophone in a week then bassoon, flugelhorn, and tuba.
There are four main types of musical instruments Brass, Woodwind, Percussion, and Strings. There is a fifth musical instrument type but its not an instrument that you can hold in your hands its your voice. The human voice is capable of many amazing sounds, from very high pitch to very low. The human voice can even sound like percussion instruments. My favorite example of this is a music video of five friend who have a specific part in their music from the bass to keeping the beat.
I wont be focusing on vocalists much because I have not taken any classes on singing and I personally can not sing so I will mainly be focusing on the four main instrument types Brass, Woodwind, Percussion, and Strings. But before you can play an instrument you need to be able to read the music. All musical instruments including some percussion use musical notes A through G. Some instruments read it differently like bass cleft instruments and treble cleft instruments but they all play A through G and some even play them both at the some time like piano. Once you know A through G the next thing is beats in a measure, most all music you listen to is in whats called 4/4 time. In 4/4 time there are four beats in a measure and each beat is called a quarter note, this is because each quarter add together equals a whole note witch is one measure long. With this very basic knowledge of music you can apply it to almost any instrument.
